Rome professor is arrested in sex-slave swoop on mafia

A Rome economics professor is one of more than 80 people arrested as suspected members of an organisation which exploits east European prostitutes and apparently links the Russian mafia and members of the Italian establishment.

Rolando Valiani, 63, a professor at Luiss - the Free University of Social Studies - was arrested on Wednesday on charges of mafia conspiracy and reducing women to slavery. The others arrested include alleged members of the Russian and Albanian mafias, two lawyers, a banker and a publisher.

The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano described the circumstances of Professor Valiani's arrest as "disconcerting".

The son of Leo Valiani, a second world war resistance hero and a member of the constituent assembly which framed Italy' modern constitution, he is accused of helping women obtain residence permits by providing documents falsely stating that they were attending economics courses.

The prosecutors claim he also lent the organisation a flat for sex parties with Russian prostitutes, and that he helped the women to find rich clients.

How Prof Valiani, a former head of a state-owned industrial holding company and a member of the International Institute 6of Public Finance, may have become mixed up with eastern European pimps remains a mystery.

"Most of the time he used these girls for promotional purposes, to establish good relations with men with whom he had a business relationship," an unnamed investigator alleged in the Rome daily Il Messaggero.

The ring with which his name is linked is suspected of having operated across the social spectrum, serving well-heeled clients from glamorous nightclubs near the Via Veneto in Rome and exploiting sex slaves who plied their trade on the streets.

Two women who tried to escape its clutches are believed to have been killed, and the organisation showed scant mercy to rebels.

The police recorded a telephone call in which a Russian madam allegedly told a client confronted with an unwilling girl: "If she refuses to go to bed with you, lock her in a room until she goes mad."